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“Social entrepreneurship has proven to provide impactful innovations for poverty alleviation ,” says Abby Maxman, President of OxFam America. Maxman was among a diverse group of people working on poverty eradication who contributed to a recent roundtable discussion on ending extreme poverty and homelessness.

The idea of ending poverty seemed absurd a generation ago. Today, the idea has been enshrined officially in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs as something the world should achieve by 2030. The roundtable participants addressed a range of topics, including a focus on how social entrepreneurs would help achieve the SDGs. Watch the 80-minute discussion in the video player above.

Judith Walker, the chief operating officer for African Clean Energy, which sells clean cookstoves that generate electricity, explains the need for social entrepreneurs to see problems as opportunities. “Energy costs are very high compared to income in the markets we deal with, meaning its either not realistically accessible or almost certainly not reliable. This should be seen as an opportunity to improve the goods and services available in order to relieve burden and create other options for those struggling with any or consistent income.”

Judith Walker

She adds, “Where we see the most potential for impact is actually by catalyzing this potential by having access to the most desperately needed energy.” What customers are able to do to improve their own lives with the tools inspires her to continue working.

Haiti’s former Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe, is now an active impact investor, supporting social entrepreneurs in Haiti. Everyone benefits from helping the poor. “Poverty is not solely the problem of the poor, the same way as climate change is not solely the problem of one country. It has consequences and implications for all of us because we live in an increasingly open and interdependent world. Improving the prospects of the most disadvantaged will improve prospects for all. ”

Anne Kjaer Riechert, a recipient of a Rotary Peace Fellowship and social entrepreneur in Germany, founded the ReDI School of Digital Integration to teach refugees, mostly from Syria, how to code. She says our focus shouldn’t be on helping people living below an arbitrary income threshold but on the income gap itself. “Poverty is relative. It is not a question of income, but the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots. ’”

Anne Riechert

OxFam’s Maxman agrees. “Our research has shown that since 2000, the poorest half of the world has received just 1% of the total increase in global wealth, while the top 1% received 50% of the increase. Inequality is bad for us all – socially, morally, ethically, economically and politically.”

Why Social Entrepreneurship is a Key Part of the Solution to Poverty

Entrepreneurship—especially social entrepreneurship—brings value to the fight against poverty that other players—governments, corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) don’t.

Alicia Wallace, president of All Across Africa, which sources handicrafts in Rwanda for sale in the United States, points out the speed of entrepreneurship. “Entrepreneurship can be harnessed to fuel positive, sustainable global impact much faster than any other form of social good .”

“I definitely see competition as creating an urgency for solving poverty and homelessness,” she adds, helping to explain why entrepreneurs can have faster impact.

Social entrepreneurs have a unique mindset, according to Arlene Samen, founder of One Heart World-Wide, a nonprofit that uses a grassroots approach to improving maternal and child health in Nepal and Tibet. “Social entrepreneurs never give up, they think outside the box and are willing to empower ‘others’ to help solve their own challenges.”

Carla Javits is the CEO of REDF, a nonprofit that invests in social enterprises that serve people who are often considered unemployable, including those who have completed jail and prison sentences, recovering addicts and people who have experienced homelessness.

Javits says social entrepreneurs are flexible. “By developing new models that cut across and blend the assets of various sectors without being stuck in orthodoxies about what each sector can or should do, social entrepreneurship opens up new possibilities to solve stubborn, seemingly insurmountable challenges.”

She also points out that social entrepreneurs think outside the box of either operating as a nonprofit surviving on donations and grants or being fully supported by revenues. Operating in that middle space creates opportunities for social entrepreneurs to leverage donor dollars with revenue generating services.

Effective social entrepreneurs relieve burdens by selling products that customers need to improve their lives. The profits from the sales create sustainable impact and provide returns to investors.

Mari Kuraishi, CEO and founder of Global Giving, a crowdfunding site for nonprofits serving communities in the developing world, points out that social entrepreneurs can experiment and then scale up. “Social entrepreneurship can play a big role in experimenting within smaller jurisdictions and communities to demonstrate how to overcome issues like poverty and homelessness.”

Mari Kuraishi

She also notes that such innovators may be able to attract resources even when government grants are not available. “When political will is missing, it’s possible–but by no means a sure thing–for social enterprises to get access to the kind of resource flow that might begin to make a dent.”

Javits agrees, noting that the use of hybrid solutions can reduce public costs with other benefits to the community and the beneficiaries. “Social entrepreneurs identify hybrid solutions that can reduce but not eliminate public costs, increase individual initiative, and generate much greater value for all of us.”

Haiti’s Lamothe cautions, however, that social entrepreneurship got its start decades ago and we’re still dealing with some of the same challenges. “Poverty is a complex issue and, since the advent of social entrepreneurship in the 70s, no social enterprise has been capable of solving poverty all by itself. After decades of social entrepreneurship, it becomes obvious to me, as to many others, that reducing poverty takes a concerted, cross-sector effort that focuses holistically and long-term on the problem.”

Social entrepreneurship is becoming a primary weapon in the war on poverty but it isn’t a magic bullet.

What Social Entrepreneurs Can Do to Help

Having established that social entrepreneurs have the ability and flexibility to contribute meaningfully to the end of poverty and homelessness, let’s look at some specific things that they can do that can help to end poverty.

All Across Africa’s Alicia Wallace says one key is to equitably divide the gains and benefits. In her model, the US corporate customers are not the beneficiaries—the artisans in Africa are. She expects the corporate customers to pay fair prices for the products that will in turn allow her to pay fair wages to the largely female workforce producing mostly baskets.

African Clean Energy’s Walker agrees, though her lens is slightly different. Her customers in Africa are her beneficiaries. She explains, “We need to consider the beneficiaries as customers, and treat them with the respect they deserve, rather than just as victims or poor. ”

The division of value among entrepreneurs, customers and investors “only needs to be a little more balanced,” she says.

James Mayfield, the founder of CHOICE Humanitarian, highlights the power of income opportunities for the extreme poor. “The key to the eradication of poverty is the creation of income and employment enhancement programs. Such programs are best stimulated by the poor themselves supported by organizations that facilitate social-oriented enterprises.”

Dr. James Mayfield

After more than 30 years in the field, Mayfield highlights the importance of empowering women with income. “The missing ingredient in many unsuccessful poverty eradication programs is the importance of women participating in village decision-making , especially their role in ensuring village leaders are willing to adhere to the villager-determined core values that emphasize behaviors showing among other things integrity, generosity, service, tolerance.”

John Hewko, the general secretary—the professional head—of Rotary International, who has built his career almost entirely in international development, says that the way people think about their entrepreneurial prospects is as important as their structural access. He cites a report that women in Latin America have lower confidence in their own abilities and have a higher fear of failure. Providing training and encouragement is as important as providing access to financing.

Mark Horvath, an advocate for the homeless and producer of the popular YouTube show Invisible People, points out one limitation that impairs the work of nonprofits. Well-funded Silicon Valley companies provide lavish coffee stations with fresh fruit while nonprofits provide access to a coffee station with an honor jar for people to contribute money to keep it supplied.

Mark Horvath

He sees the problem as limiting the effectiveness of nonprofit social enterprises because foundations are risk adverse not funding new ideas or allowing autonomy for a nonprofit to do what they do best.

Government’s Role in Supporting Social Entrepreneurs

One surprising theme that developed in the discussion among these advocates for ending poverty was the need for governments to structurally support social enterprises.

Riechert, the young entrepreneur who founded the coding school for refugees in Germany, says, “I would love that there would be more collaboration between the government learning from the social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs getting more capital from the government to continue growing and scaling their solutions.”

Relatively small amounts of capital infused in a revenue-generating business can have the impact of allowing the enterprise to scale. The closer the business is to complete self-funding, the higher the impact of grants or patient investments.

She notes, too, after her recent visit to the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan that government policies in the camps inhibit the ability of the people there to care and provide for themselves. The government doesn’t allow refugees there to engage in any entrepreneurship.

“I would love to see a big change because if refugee was actually seen as an asset and it’s an opportunity for the Jordanian people to make money and to have more cash flow into the country by having these entrepreneurs coming from outside. I think everyone would stand to benefit from it,” she says.

Eytan Stibbe, the founder of Vital Capital, an impact investor actively serving in Sub-Saharan Africa, has achieved remarkable scale, building tens of thousands of moderate-income housing units. He says, “What we found is that the most important issue is sharing in order to reach scale in working with the government. And we try to cooperate with the government so that the interests are aligned. That’s the only way we can reach scale.”

Katie Meyler, the founder of More Than Me, a social enterprise that partners with the government in Liberia to operate primary schools. “We can only reach the masses of people who live without [education] through a public-private partnership.

Haiti’s Lamothe, sees a different but still complementary role for government. Noting that governments in the developing world are often as resource constrained as their people, the government can be a sort of GPS guide to where the problems and opportunities for social entrepreneurs are.

Laurent S. Lamothe, former Prime Minister of HaitiWorld Initiative

The Examples of Social Entrepreneurship Reducing Poverty

To emphasize the point that the members of the roundtable are not approaching this topic from ivory towers but instead they come from the field, bringing on the ground perspectives, let’s look at some of the projects and enterprises they are running.

Riechert founded her coding school for refugees after 800,000 arrived in Germany in 2015, overwhelming government resources. She noted that even after they arrived, Germany had 51,000 open jobs in the I.T. field. The economy was constrained by a lack of available talent. So, she launched her school training refugees to fill those vacant positions. Her students quickly coded an app called Bureaucrazy to help other refugees navigate the German bureaucracy.

Samen, whose grassroots efforts in Nepal and Tibet have made dramatic improvements in maternal and child health, says her One Heart World-Wide is a beneficiary of a social enterprise in Australia called Thankyou that donates 100 percent of its profits to charities. The company sells water, body care, food and baby care products.

Samen says, “They set it up that, so when you buy the product it has a code bar and you can actually see where your money is going to be invested.” She would like to see this model grow and replicate.

Javits, whose entire business model focuses on funding social enterprises serving people who are at risk of homelessness, offers an example.

“Nonprofits that provide services to people experiencing homelessness have started new businesses in property management that employ their clients, paying them wages, and preparing them for long-term employment. By selling their services like a business, while hiring people who most companies would not give a chance, offering a more supportive work environment, and investing 100% of their ‘profits’ in their employees’ success and well-being, the social entrepreneurs who start these enterprises offer a more sustainable approach that gets to the root of the problem.”

Carla Javits

Rotary’s Hewko points to a microlending program supported by Rotary in the Esmeraldas Province of Ecuador. “Borrowers are organized into credit groups, and cross-guarantee each other’s loans. With credit officers working locally, the people who benefit – primarily poor women and youth – gain more confidence to start businesses, and are more likely to repay the loans. They also receive vocational, business and personal development training from NGOs including Rotary, FUDECE and the Grameen Cooperative, and SECAP, a government training organization.”

Haiti’s Lamothe highlights the work in a small fishing village in Haiti destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Working with a group of nonprofits, including the Carlos Slim Foundation, Happy Hearts and Sean Penn’s foundation, have been replacing tools of the trade—fishing lines and boats—lost in the hurricane. They’ve also been helping the villagers get access to buyers, connecting them to restaurants and supermarkets. “Their revenues have gone from about you know $1000 US per month for the whole village to right now it’s ten times more.”

Impact investor Morgan Simon, author of Real Impact, offers up her favorite example. “One of the projects I’m a big fan of is the Working World, which provides finance for worker-owned cooperatives and they do so through a non-extractive model.”

She credits Brendan Martin, the founder of Working World, with coining the term “non-extractive financing.” He defines this concept as being loans that can be serviced entirely by the projects they fund with surplus left over. None of the existing resources of the borrower need be devoted to debt service.

“They’ve funded over a thousand loans with the 99 percent repayment,” Simon concludes.

Expanding Social Enterprise Concepts to the Broader Economy

As the group discussed the challenges of eradicating poverty, another theme developed: the need to get the broader economy to apply more of the guiding principles of social entrepreneurship.

Rotary’s Hewko put it this way, “I think the big question here is: How do we channel the private sector? That’s really where the money is—in the private sector—and the long term sustainable solution is vibrant economic systems and economies that work.”

Not only is it important to put people to work but there needs to be a greater social awareness employed by more companies.

John Hewko

He continues, “How do you inculcate into core business models the idea of social good, so social good becomes part of the core business model of a corporation, for example, as opposed to just for corporate social responsibility which we’re doing today?”

He then goes a step further and suggests that we need a mechanism to reflect positive social impact in share prices in the stock market. “That’s not easy but that’s the holy–that’s the Holy Grail.”

Hewko highlights the leadership of Paul Polman at Unilever and others who are “beginning to think very seriously about how we work to change core business models where social good becomes not just something good we do on the side but part of our everyday business.”

Speaking of poverty and homelessness, Hewko concludes, “These problems all need to be addressed in a cohesive fashion with private sector, civil society and government working hand in glove.”

Walker, of African Clean Energy, agrees. “I do believe that the business models of nonprofits and of for-profits and everything should actually become more similar more like each other.”

Concerns and Opportunities

Still, there are some concerns about the challenges ahead in eradicating poverty and homelessness.

Horvath, the homeless advocate who was himself homeless for a time, worries that nonprofits are often forced to follow money over mission and aptitude. “What I’m seeing in the homeless services sector is and I like to say it like this maybe I’m a farmer and I grow apples. I’m really good at it but all of the money is over in oranges. I’m not so good at oranges but I’m going to start growing oranges even though I can’t do it really well because I’ve got staff to pay and I’ve got an electric bill and everything else. So you have all these people just going after the money instead of really addressing fighting poverty and homelessness.”

The United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Kenya, Siddharth Chatterjee, explains the challenge and opportunity ahead for Africa.

“Africa, for example, will see its population double from the current 1.1 billion to around 2.3 billion by 2050. Over 70% of its population is less than 30 and its median age is 19. One hundred million new jobs per year need to be created in Africa to cater to this looming ‘youth bulge.’ It could prove to be a demographic dividend or a disaster.”

Chatterjee is an optimist, however. He says, “Africa is going to be the new market of the future and if we invest now, not only will we overcome poverty and homelessness but contribute to reduced fragility and instability, advance peace and economic growth and reduce the burden of economic migrants to the West and the US.”

We’ve Got This

Generally speaking, the group was optimistic about prospects for eliminating poverty and homelessness.

REDF’s Javits says, “ Something we can do in our lifetime is to end homelessness for the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands who have no stable home each night. ”

Arlene Samen

Samen, who has spent her career among the poor in Nepal and Tibet, says simply, “ It can be done. ”

This article, which is published originally for Forbes, will become part of a book with the working title Thirty Years to Peace.

Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

On October 6, 2017, I will be speaking at the Colorado Parks and Recreation Association annual conference. This story highlights the work of one of their members.

Around the world, local parks and recreation leaders serve without much notoriety or attention. You will immediately recognize the value parks bring to your community the moment you think of your city, town or neighborhood without them.

Beyond the parks, the activities within them provide a lifeline to underserved and at-risk community members. The hydro therapy pool in the Town of Parker in suburban Denver is an example of a community resource that is making a difference there without making much of a splash.

Deni Parker, 25, runs the therapy pool programs. The classes–and for now she teaches them all herself–serve only up to a handful at a time. Many of the sessions are one-on-one. A six-week course meeting twice per week costs just $30–about the cost of one session of physical therapy. In other words, the Parker therapy program costs just about one-twelfth as much.

Watch my full interview with Deni in the video player at the top of this article.

Deni, who played basketball in college, loves her job and the people she serves. She offers classes for seniors and others suffering from arthritis, providing a low impact, low-weight, low-pain opportunity for them to move and get exercise. She also has classes for cancer survivors and people recovering from injuries and surgeries, including people with hip replacements. The therapy pool provides a safe place for them to get exercise.

The students love the classes, often arriving early, lingering to go for lunch with classmates and then returning to visit on days when there is no class. The therapy programs have served over 3,000 people.

Her programs are not entirely self-funding. They rely on surpluses from the more popular youth athletic programs. Overall, the programs at Parker Parks and Recreation Department achieve a 100 percent recovery. The recreation facilities recover between 80-90 percent of their operating costs, she says proudly. “Parker’s recovery rate far outpaces the national average,” she adds.

“Our primary focus remains on services, not finances,” Deni says. This approach attracts patrons from people outside of Parker, increasing revenue and allowing the Town to expand programs and better serve Parker residents.

The Town’s Parks and Recreation Department was created shortly after the Town was incorporated and its citizens approved a one-half percent sales and use tax in 1990. This fund, which has grown as the Town has grown, provides funding for the construction, maintenance and operation of various park and recreation facilities and amenities. With the guidance of our Town Council and the support of our citizens, Parker’s Parks and Recreation Department has become one of the premier providers for park and recreation services in the state and winner of two Gold Medal awards (2000 and 2011) from the National Recreation and Parks Association. The mission for the Parker Parks and Recreation Department is “To provide quality parks and recreation facilities and services to meet the needs of our community by utilizing the resources of our team, and fostering an environment that encourages support, creativity, and integrity.”

Deni’s bio:

I am the daughter of Shawn and Kathy Jacobs, originally from a small town in Kansas where I grew up on a farm/ranch. After attending Garden City Community College for two years, I was recruited for a full scholarship to play basketball at Metropolitan State University in Denver Colorado. There I was awarded first team Academic All-District in recognition of outstanding accomplishments on the court and in the classroom. I was fortunate to be the first women’s basketball player in Metro State’s history to earn that honor. During my time at Metro I discovered Therapeutic Recreation (TR) and it aligned perfectly with my passion for helping others. After graduating with a Bachelors of Arts with a concentration in Therapeutic Recreation and passing the certification test, I was offered the Therapeutic/Senior Programs Coordinator position with the Town of Parker in December 2015. During my time with the Town of Parker I have added several new programs within TR including an Aquatic Therapy Program, Unified Kickball League, Buddy Bike Ride Program, a Bowling League and more. I have also been instrumental in the creation of new programs in the areas of chronic conditions. I am a very dedicated young professional whose main goal is to help the community thrive and provide outreach to underserved populations.

Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

Michael Trainer, 40, one of the founders of the successful Global Citizen events in Central Park in New York City, had a life-altering experience following the third concert. His father was diagnosed with dementia.

Trainer had been focused almost exclusively on Global Citizen, an event that people earn the right to attend by doing good deeds, activating tremendous cumulative impact through collective advocacy, donations and volunteerism. The shock of his father’s diagnosis caused him to reassess his priorities.

Recognizing that Global Citizen was in good hands, he left and began researching dementia, its causes and treatments. He came away determined to help people achieve “Peak Mind” and so created a new social enterprise that would encourage people to improve their health with an eye on preventing dementia.

Watch the full interview with Trainer in the video player at the top of this article.

“While I have been focusing on issues like malaria and polio, diseases that are affecting the extreme poor, I now became aware of the fact that there was an extraordinary prevalence–growing prevalence–of diseases like diabetes and dementia that were affecting a different part of the globe.” Trainer continues, “And so it led me down the rabbit hole and was the genesis of Peak Mind.”

One of the things he found was a link between Type 2 diabetes and dementia.

Dementia already costs the world about 1% of global GDP or about $605 billion–and diabetes costs the world about twice as much. Trainer also explains that one in two people will likely get dementia, meaning that almost everyone will either get it or end up caring for someone with it. Similarly, about half the U.S. and Chinese populations are pre-diabetic. To punctuate this point, Trainer adds, ” We now have more obese people on the planet than non-obese people for the first time in history.”

Trainer compares his last venture with his current one. “With Global Citizen, we wanted to move beyond guilt and shame as a driver for social change, and more take people on a journey through hope and inspiration. I want to do the same with Peak Mind, only this time the focus is creating impact from the inside out.”

To inspire people to use and protect their minds, Peak Mind holds periodic events. The first event featured His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama hosted by Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker. At the events, Trainer says they hope to both inspire people and to provide practical, measurable steps people can take to improve their health and their lives.

Andrea Fennewald, Founder of The Wellness Collective, collaborated with Trainer on the first Peak Mind event. She says, “We believe change starts on an individual level, and thus aimed to create a shift in attitudes and habits around physical and mental health.”

Trainer says that Peak Mind is profitable, that it employs ten people and expects to increase that to 20 as the next event approaches. The company expects to top $1 million in revenue for 2016.

Michael Trainer with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

“I’ve been a social entrepreneur my whole life,” Trainer says. He lived and studied in Sri Lanka at age 19 and that led to a series of nonprofit, international development and social enterprise opportunities, culminating in Peak Mind.

“Our mission is at the core of what we do, my background is in building social movements, most recently as national director of Global Citizen. Most of these enterprises were nonprofit or for-purpose entities driven by impact at scale. With Peak Mind, the mission is the same, to build a movement around next-generation wellness,” Trainer concludes.

After learning of his father’s diagnosis, he took his dad to South Africa on a vacation. They shared a great bonding experience that included learning more about Nelson Mandela, whom Trainer considers his hero and role model. Peak Mind may not be able to cure those who have dementia today but Trainer hopes it will help prevent millions or even billions from suffering from it in the future.

Over 1 million people have read my books; have you? Learn more about my courses on entrepreneurship, crowdfunding and corporate social responsibility here.

Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

A lesson all successful entrepreneurs seem to learn quickly is that they must solve a problem. For social entrepreneurs, this is even more important. If people are literally dying as they wait for a solution, the ones who show up to help have a greater obligation to do so something that will solve the problem—at least for some of those experiencing it.

Classy, which operates a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits and social entrepreneurs, has created an award the company calls the Classy Award to recognize social enterprises that “are tackling some of the world’s most complex problems,” according to a company press release. The awards were presented on June 16, 2017, in Boston.

For this article, the ten winners and Classy co-founder Pat Walsh, the company’s chief impact officer, came together to record a discussion about the problems they solve and the work they are doing to solve them. You can watch the entire discussion with the winners in the video player at the top of this article.

Classy Award Winners

In no particular order, this article will identify each of the winners, the problems they seek to solve and the work they are doing to solve them.

Rebecca Firth, the community partnerships manager for Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, said, “In many places in the developing world, good quality digital maps do not exist, leaving millions of people uncounted. Without free, up-to-date maps it is hard to deliver health care and services, making places more vulnerable to disasters and epidemics.”

Imagine trying to find the source of an Ebola outbreak in a rural area where no reliable maps exist. How do you find a village that is at risk if it isn’t even on the map?

“What we do is we help anyone anywhere in the world create those maps,” says Firth. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team uses a crowdsourcing model to create maps using the company’s simple online tool.

“This week we passed 30000 volunteers. We’ve mapped 45 million people who haven’t been on the map before.” Firth explains that these folks can now receive services that were difficult or even impossible to deliver before the map was created.

“One example of this is last year when there was a yellow fever outbreak in Kinshasa, the Missing Maps community activated to map the area using OpenStreetMap tools activated to map the area,” Firth says. “And then what followed was the largest and fastest vaccination campaign ever by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) who used the map to vaccinate 720,000 people in 10 days.”

Jose Quiñonez, 45, CEO of Mission Asset Fund, explains the person and societal problems that come from excluding some people from the traditional financial system. “People would be left in the shadows of our economy.” He notes that we all lose when certain individuals are not allowed to access basic financial instruments and therefore can’t buy a home, can’t start a business and can’t even invest in their own education. Those without a credit score are “economically invisible,” he says. About 45 million people in the United States fall into this group, he says. Globally, about 2 billion people fall into this category.

Mission Asset Fund is helping to formalize and legitimize an informal practice that is common around the world. The practice of lending circles, which go by a variety of names with varying protocols, all revolve around small communities creating tiny savings banks where members contribute periodically and occasionally get a turn at borrowing from the fund. By formalizing lending circles, Mission Asset Fund provides a connection to the formal economy and reveals the invisible people.

Celeste Mergens, 55, founder and CEO for Days for Girls notes that there are 300 million women and girls of reproductive age counted among those who are living on less than $1.95 per day, the World Bank standard for extreme poverty. “Meeting basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and hygiene is a constant challenge for many of these women and girls,” she says. One of the challenges women face is the shame and stigma associated with menstruation.

Days for Girls has engaged 60,000 “Health Ambassadors” in the developing world to teach men and women about menstruation to remove the stigma. She notes, “Without periods there would be no people.” These ambassadors sell reusable feminine hygiene kits, increasing their own incomes at the same time they share their passion for the dignity of women.

Elizabeth Scharpf, founder and CEO of SHE, identified and tackled much the same problem with a different strategy. She notes that women without access to proper feminine hygiene use rags or even leaves to manage their menstruation. She confirms that some young women are victims of sexual predation or are forced into prostitution to fund feminine hygiene products so they can stay in school.

Scharpf says, “Eighteen percent of women and girls in Rwanda missed out on work or school because they could not afford to buy menstrual pads. Quite apart from the personal injustice, and the larger issues of health and dignity, we’re also talking about a potential GDP loss of $215 per woman per year – a total of $115,000,000 in Rwanda. It’s bad business.”

She invented a feminine hygiene pad that can be produced locally in Rwanda, made from the fiber of a banana tree. SHE helps women launch businesses to manufacture and distribute affordable pads.

Kenton Lee, 32, founder of Because International, identified the problem that many children who are growing up in poverty lack good shoes. One of the contributing factors is that kids outgrow their shows quickly and the parents and caregivers can’t afford to buy new shoes every time the kids outgrow a pair.

Lee says, “Shoes are a big deal.” There are three problems he highlights from a lack of shoes: 1) health is at risk, especially in communities without adequate sanitation, 2) shoes are often a required part of a school uniform so a lack of shoes keeps kids out of school, and 3) the dignity and self confidence that are missing without shoes.

Because International markets the “Shoe That Grows” primarily to faith-based organizations and other NGOs, that donate the shoes to children who need them. The durable shoes come in only two sizes but are both adjustable for five full shoe sizes so kids can wear them for years. He acknowledges that, “It doesn’t solve every problem for the kids.” The program really took off two years ago and they have been able to provide 100,000 shoes to kids in 89 countries and are now beginning to manufacture the shoes in some of the places where they are being most used.

“About one in five people or one 1.6 billion people across the globe lack adequate housing,” says Jyoti Patel, director of capital markets for Habitat for Humanity. One of the key reasons for this is a lack of access to affordable mortgage financing for low-income families. As a result, many low-income families live in makeshift shelters even though they have income and could afford to support a small mortgage. Instead, they slowly build and upgrade their homes slowly over time.

Much of the microfinance industry that some think of as a solution to poverty focuses on short-term loans to support entrepreneurship. This creates a cash-flow mismatch when someone uses short-term microfinance loans to make permanent housing upgrades—think roof or a water tank–that will last for years or decades.

Habitat has created a $100 million “MicroBuild Fund” to finance longer-term loans to people without access to traditional credit sources so they can afford to upgrade their housing. The fund “is comprised of $10 million in equity and $90 million as a line of credit received from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation,” Patel says. Habitat is the largest equity holder. Omidyar Network and MetLife have also invested. Triple Jump, based in the Netherlands, is also an investor and also manages the fund. The money is invested with an eye toward capital preservation and a focus on both social and environmental impact.

There is a new form of sex trafficking of children in the Philippines that sends shivers down the spine of every parent. Victims are taken from the street and presented via the internet to customers who direct the sexual abuse of the child in real time.

Blair Burns, 43, the senior vice president of Justice Operations for International Justice Mission, says that this is part of a broader problem, the general failure of the rule of law.

Burns reports:

International Justice Mission (IJM) is the world’s largest international anti-slavery organization working to combat modern day slavery, human trafficking, and other forms of violence against the poor in 17 communities across the developing world. IJM does this by partnering with local authorities and partners to rescue victims, restore survivors, convict perpetrators, and transform broken public justice systems. To date, IJM has helped to rescue over 34,000 people from slavery and other forms of violent oppression.

As global health improves, one group is being left behind, according to Molly McHugh, 44, communications director for Grassroot Soccer, a nonprofit that has created an innovative way to reach young people. “In the last decade HIV related deaths have decreased for every age group except adolescents,” she says. There is a gap in the delivery of healthcare for this cohort.

The gap exists for a variety of reasons, from the focus on infant mortality to the lack of a trusted, competent person to talk to about sex and reproductive health. No teenager wants to talk to their parents about sex.

To empower young people to be the delivery system for accurate information about sexual and reproductive health, Grassroots Soccer uses the sport of soccer to engage them. The organization focuses on HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and malaria. “Our solution is to reach adolescents through a combination of 3 C’s: Curriculum using soccer-based activities and lively discussions; Coaches who are young community leaders, trained to be health educators, who connect personally with participants and become trusted mentors; and a Culture of safe spaces for youth to ask questions, share opinions, and support each other,” Molly says.

Samasource

Poverty is primarily a lack of money result from deficient economic opportunities, according to Samasource’s Wendy Gonzalez, its senior vice president and managing director. “Poverty is at the root of all social ills. We’re really trying to solve poverty.”

Samasource begins by providing training to “marginalized women and youth” to teach them to complete “dignified” internet-based work. Gonzalez says, “We work in the slums of Nairobi. We work in extremely poor, rural Uganda. We also work in India.” After providing digital skills training, Samasource either places them into full-time work or hires them directly.

“Our goal is really to be the bridge employer.” The idea is that once a person is employable and can work for a company without a subsidy, they are likely to be successful.

So far, Samasource has moved 36,000 people out of poverty and has paid out $10 million in wages. Gonzalez reports that 80 percent of them stay employed or go on to get university education.

To say that OpenBiome fits a unique niche in the social good space is a gross understatement. The nonprofit stool bank is all about helping people get healthy poop. Yes, that kind of stool.

About 500,000 people get and 30,000 people die each year in the U.S. from a bowel infection called Clostridium Difficile or C-diff. It is a hospital acquired disease that results from antibiotic use that kills that healthy fecal microbiota. James Burgess, 30, executive director, said that he and his colleagues started OpenBiome after a friend suffered through a long-lasting C-diff infection.

“Today, we provide carefully-screened, clinical-grade stool to 900 hospitals across the country, enabling thousands of treatments and supporting dozens of ground-breaking clinical trials in the microbiome,” he says. The treatment is a fecal transplant. The material is traditionally administered via a colonoscopy. A new pill—a “poop pill”—is being developed, he says.

OpenBiome is now testing the use of fecal transplants to treat a wide variety of gut treatments.

The Award

The Classy Award selection process is rigorous, according to co-founder Pat Walsh. There is a four-phase process that begins with a lengthy nomination form. Each year, Classy works to improve the process. A selection committee determines who all the winners are.

The nomination process begins this fall for next year’s awards. If you know someone who is solving a problem worth solving, consider nominating them.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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